Report questions whether safety is top priority at Pilgrim nuke plant

PLYMOUTH – The federal report on Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s performance during the last quarter of 2016 looked like a rerun of other recent evaluations of the beleaguered plant.

Results prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to observe, at one point in the report, that Entergy, Pilgrim’s owner and operator, didn’t conduct maintenance activities “such that nuclear safety is the overriding priority.”

Five violations were found in this latest quarterly inspection report, and all were related to failures to properly maintain systems, which in most cases would be called upon to protect the reactor from core damage during an emergency.

The violations were characterized as “more than minor” in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 50-page report, but Entergy was not cited for the infractions because they were incorporated into the plant’s corrective action plan or were fixed after they had caused operational problems.

Entergy’s response was also a reprise of its previous statements regarding violations found during past quarterly inspections.

“The quarterly inspection reports are issued after the events they describe have occurred,” Entergy spokesman Patrick O’Brien wrote in an email. “Often, the issues that the NRC is identifying publicly for the first time have already been successfully resolved.

“We remain committed to safe and reliable operations and we will do everything to meet and/or exceed regulatory requirements through shutdown in 2019.”

One violation in the report involved a loose wire on the feedwater regulating valve, which forced workers to manually shut down the reactor on Sept. 6, 2016. The failure was due to a lack of maintenance dating back to May 2015 and was later repaired.

Another violation involved vibrations in the high-pressure coolant injection system’s main pump. Vibrations were detected in May 2015, but Entergy failed to fix the problem. The system was finally declared inoperable Nov. 7, 2016, and Entergy then addressed the issue by installing a plate to lessen vibration. The inspection report noted the problem was related to human performance, since a longstanding equipment issue hadn’t been addressed.

Pilgrim operators also scored a violation for not inspecting a main steam isolation valve and removing debris. The valve, needed to prevent radioactivity from leaking into the environment during an emergency, failed to close in the required time during testing in mid-August. It had also failed testing five months before, but the shortcoming hadn’t been corrected.

Other infractions included the performance of relay testing while the reactor was operating. In an emergency, the testing would have blocked power to some safety systems. Testing will now be conducted when the reactor is shut down. Another infraction was a failure by Entergy to adequately evaluate operability of a component in the reactor coolant recirculation system.

The component had failed during testing on Oct. 3 but was not declared inoperable for two more weeks, Sheehan said. The component provides data on reactor coolant flow to the plant’s reactor protection system. That automated system can initiate an unplanned automatic reactor shutdown if coolant flow is too low, Sheehan said.

The NRC report attributed the delay in addressing the system to “heavy workload on the available staff who were qualified to provide the necessary input.”

Pilgrim had been cited for four violations in its third quarter report from last year, for issues ranging from outdated electrical relays to broken radiation monitoring systems.

Meanwhile, the public must wait a few more months for a report related to the three-week special inspection conducted by a team of 20 federal inspectors. Results may not be available until some time in June.

The public will have a chance to offer comments on the 45-year-old plant – currently ranked as one of the worst performers in the country – at the NRC’s annual assessment meeting in Plymouth in late March.

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